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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Having termed 90% of Indians as
'idiots', Mr Markandey Katju, the headline-grabber chairman of the Press
Council of India has been supported by the Congress for his recent utterances.
Nothing surprising. Mr Katju is a very busy man. Except the Press Council,
everything gets his attention.

His job was to serve the cause of a
free and fearless media and turn the Press Council into an effective instrument
to safeguard the rights and privileges of journalists and address the
grievances of the people in this regard. He has failed in that assigned duty.
It will be interesting to know how many days he actually attended the office
and addressed issues that affect the credibility of his institution and the
media at large. Instead, he loved to become a political spokesperson enjoying
perks and privileges at public expense.

In a country which has the world's
largest newspaper industry having more than 82,237 registered newspapers out of
which 4,853 new newspapers were registered during 2010-11 and according to the
annual report of World Association of Newspapers (WAN) 2011 an estimated 330
million newspapers are circulated daily in the country, the premier official
body concerning media affairs received only 90 complaints in the last four
years, and even 'out of the 90 complaints, more than 40 were filed four years
ago'.

On an independent media watch site,
The Hoot, Indira Akoijam writes, "delay in adjudications on the part of
the Press Council made the complainants to either stop pursuing the case or
such complaints to be disposed of depending on the Inquiry Committee. Three
pending cases from the year 2007 were taken up for adjudication in 2011 and
2012. The Press Council does not cite anywhere in its published index of
adjudications as to why the cases remained pending from 2007 until taken up in
2011- 2012."

An example of a serious complaint
which was taken up for hearing after 12 months, illustrates the 'active' nature of the PCI: "In one case, a suo motu
inquiry was directed on the reported attack on the offices of Kannada Prabha
and Jaya Kirna, which appeared in The Hindustan Times, The Hindu and The
Times of India. The complaint was filed on 22nd March 2010 …The complaint was
finally heard on 27th February 2012 where the complainants informed that they
had no grievances and hence, the Inquiry Committee dropped the suo motu inquiry."
Another example of how the issues of press and morality was dealt with is an
eye opener. "Two complaints were filed under this category ( Press and
Morality), one dealing with an inappropriate portrayal of women in an
advertisement by a local newspaper in Assam, and use of an indecent picture of
a woman in one of the articles in India Today, New Delhi. One complaint was
dismissed as no one appeared for the hearing and in the other case (Assam news
daily, Asomiya Pratidin) PCI advised the newspaper not to accept advertisements
that may corrupt young minds."
(http://thehoot.org/web/HoweffectiveisthePressCouncil/6292-1-1-9-true.html) .

The Press Council under Mr Katju has
become so ineffective that newspapers and magazines against which the
complaints are filed often ignore its call to appear for hearing or remain
dismissive of its 'cautionary advises'. Mr Katju remains soft on
anti-national writings. In one case, filed by the Army against the highly
objectionable and seditious article published in a Srinagar daily, the Press
Council simply cautioned the editor to be more careful in the future and in
another case , the editor or the owner ignored its show cause notice. What did
Mr Katju do? Press Council 'expressed displeasure when the respondent did not
appear for the hearing on the show cause notice. The case was subsequently
dropped".

Indira Akoijam in her brilliant
analysis opines about the Press Council's conduct, "even in cases dealing
with morality, plagiarism, paid news and harassment, the strictest decisions
only amount to being censured ... More than the fate of the cases filed before
the Council, which often come to a tame end, the point to note is that several
recent controversies involving members of the print media do not even come up before
it. These include cases of election-time paid news, the controversies regarding
the Radia tapes where print journalists were involved, the publishing of mms
pictures by a leading Hindi daily, cases of regional newspapers reporting hate
speech, and so on."

But ostensibly a busy Mr Katju has
no time to devote on such issues for which he was appointed. Instead, he has
given an impression of being an applicant in a hurry to the media cell of
a political party. It's quite natural that like a mother comes to defend her
errand son, a national leader of the Congress has dutifully come to
rescue him.

No real expansion of BJP's support base happened since last election. Even hardcore fans of Namo will tell you that being seen as corporate friendly is suicidal in many states. Ask Chandrababu Naidu or SM Krishna. India's destiny cannot be revived with corporate greed. Simple as that.

BJP needs a moderate leader who will widen the support base and make it easy for alliance partners to join hands. Because, whether we see an UPA-3 or not will be solely decided by alliances in the next elections. Especially, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh are going to decide the fate of next election.